With all the goings-on here about the judicial emasculation plans — now hopefully giving way to a more modest reform that a broad swathe of us can live with — I haven’t discussed goings-on in the US much. The recent Nashville school shooting proved primarily that there are no depths the “liberal” US MSM won’t plumb. (Newsweek, interestingly, is bucking that trend.)
But now we have this bombshell: the “Soros Of Puppets” appointed DA indicting Donald Trump on flimsy trumped-up charges.
Insty reminds us of his legal essay: “Ham Sandwich Nation: due process when everything is a crime”. The title refers to the law school quip that if a prosecutor looks hard enough, they can find grounds to indict a ham sandwich.
https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1470&context=utklaw_facpubs
Florida governor Ron DeSantis, hardly a Trump buddy, has this to say:
Note the speculation further down the post that the antiDemocratic – MSM complex is deliberately trying to set up Trump as a martyr to boost him with GOP voters and ensure he gets the nomination, as they are “sure” he’ll be easier to knock down in the general election than a Ron DeSantis, say. But this might backfire spectacularly with Trump following in the footsteps of Grover Cleveland (thus far the only POTUS to have served two non-consecutive terms).
In tangentially related news, the “Jan. 6 QAnon shaman” was suddenly released from prison. “The Bureau of Prisons gave no explanation for the decision, but it is impossible not to think that it is related to the release of a video that showed Chansley being escorted peacefully and helpfully by Capitol Police, suggesting that the prosecutors misled the jury on the circumstances of his arrest. That video was not available to Chansley and his lawyers when constructing his defense, violating Chansley’s constitutional rights. As you recall from earlier posts, the prosecutors failed to make a ‘Brady disclosure’ of exculpatory evidence.”
Insty comments: “People need to be held accountable. And in time they will be.” He also compares and contrasts.
And thinks Commander Salamander’s assessment of the US ruling class’s relationship with the ChiCom regime is too charitable: “If you don’t wake up every morning cursing those responsible for defense and China policy in the 1990s … the gobsmackingly short sighted arrogance of it all – then what use are you, actually? […] With a few exceptions, from partially completed CV rusting in Ukraine, to teaching the Communist Chinese how to MIRV ICBM warheads, to opening up our best research institutions to spies an assets, the USA was beset internally by unserious people with the attention span of a hamster and the historical perspective of a newborn in serious jobs requiring long-term thinking and decision making.”
What, the US was run then by a stereotype of Generation Z? I’m a very firm believer in Hanlon’s Razor (actually Heinlein’s Razor): Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained as stupidity or incompetence. But at least some of what has been going on, I suspect, is a combination of certain Brahmandarins’s desire they had as much unchallenged power as Chinese mandarins, with “taking care of our friends” through all sorts of covert bribery[*] and access to a supposedly huge market[**], and some key people (such as Abu Hunter) being outright on the take.
Joel Kotkin has a somewhat different take in a must-read and must-hear interview on how Silicon Valley lost touch with reality. “The tech elites are very out of touch with the country they’re in. They feel very little loyalty to it. Some of the biggest backers of China are Silicon Valley companies. Apple has already signed an agreement to share its computer technology with China and to start buying some of its chips from China. If you read things from people at Apple and other tech companies, they may think it’s nicer to live in Silicon Valley than in China. But I don’t think they see the future being here. They feel no visceral connection to the culture of the vast majority of America. That’s at the root of a lot of this. [/par] The great thing about America, for all our many problems, is the idea of aspiration, the idea that somebody can come from nowhere and become someone and can build a good life and own a house. That’s not the trajectory in Silicon Valley anymore. And even worse, the tech elites support policies that make it impossible for anybody who isn’t in the privileged classes to ever move upwards. Not only are they not providing opportunities, they’re also trying to squash opportunities for other people. They may say they’re doing it in the name of saving the planet or in the name of ‘equity’, or whatever reason they want to give you. But the reality is that Silicon Valley has become a centre of almost everything that is now assaulting the middle and working classes in the West.”
[*] One covert bribery method that is technically legal is to invite your “mark” to come give an all-expenses-paid lecture for a huge honorarium. Make sure to make it big enough that even if taxes duly paid, a nice chunk of money remains.
[**] The entertainment industry learned the hard way that the Chinese market was flooded with illegal copies of their product. I’ve also covered here the hilarious way in which Uber was literally taken for a ride in China. Uber, China, and a scam Mel Brooks would have been proud to invent
Spin, strangeness, and charm 
Insty comments: “People need to be held accountable. And in time they will be.”
Facts, sadly, not in evidence.
And with that reluctant acknowledgment, it is time to fear for israel. The Left, which hates Israel, is emboldened. The Right focuses on survival, has more important fish to fry as they say and for years has seen no return for its support